• Benefits and drawback to start-ups
  • Start-up versus license
  • Considering the university vision/mission
  • Aligning stakeholders: Inventor, University, Entrepreneur
• Assessment
  • Feasibility analysis
  • Assessing patentability, patent claim breadth, competition, market trends, market size and likely penetration, time to market, scale-up factors, manufacturing and distribution burdens, likely partners
• Bootstrapping issues
  • Pre-launch funding
  • Getting started: Space, corporate documents, compliance and tax issues
  • Starting lean and mean
• Team building and dynamics
  • Partnering
  • Advisory board recruitment/make-up
  • Leadership
  • University interest/role
  • COI and other legal issues
• Money matters and inventor buy-in
  • Value versus equity
  • Leadership incentives/options/employment agreements
  • Early-stage valuation
  • The investor perspective deal-breakers
  • Managing inventor expectati

Gerard Eldering is Founder and President of InnovateTech Ventures, specializing in venture creation based on inventions licensed from universities and research institutions. Since the company’s founding in 2007, InnovateTech has supported numerous mid-Atlantic universities and co-founded three start-up companies including AlphaDetect and Trilumen. Gerard has been working in the technology transfer community for more than a decade and is passionate about the creation of professionally managed and funded start-up companies. Prior to launching InnovateTech, he founded and served as Director of the Technology Transfer Office at The MITRE Corporation. He is an MBA and a registered patent agent.

Brian Cummings is the Executive Director of the Technology Commercialization Office at the University of Utah and Assistant Vice President for Technology Ventures. In the two and a half years that he has been in this role, the office has produced record revenues and successfully started 51 new technology-based companies, 80% of which have received initial funding and beyond. Brian has started three companies in his entrepreneurial career, and his latest endeavor is a technology based start-up utilizing RFID. He is also President of a university-based personalized medicine company. Previously, Brian led the life science commercialization efforts at the University of Texas and prior to that was the Director of Business Development at Micro-Bac International.

Jack Brittain is the University of Utah’s Vice President of Technology Venture Development. He received his Ph.D. in Business from the University of California, Berkeley. A professor for 15 years before becoming Dean of the David Eccles School of Business (1999-2009), he published numerous studies of strategic change in dynamic environments, research recognized by the Academy of Management with two outstanding paper awards. Professor Brittain is the recipient of five teaching awards, including the University of Texas Chancellor’s Council Outstanding Professor Award. In 2005 he received the Best of State Award in Education for the David Eccles School’s innovative entrepreneurship and non-profit consulting programs. In 2006 and 2007 he was selected as one of the v|100 by Utah’s leading venture capitalists, an award that recognizes Utah’s most successful entrepreneurs, and was featured as one of Utah’s “25 most influential business people” in 2006 and 2007 by Connect, and was named one of “Utah’s 100 Most Influential People” in 2008 by Utah Business. In 2008 he was named the first recipient of the Pierre Lassonde Presidential Chair in Entrepreneurship by the University of Utah. He serves on the boards of Junior Achievement, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, the University Venture Fund, the Lassonde New Venture Development Center, the Sorenson Innovation Center, and the University of Utah Research Foundation.